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OpenAPI elb-openapi 4.21 rebuild for sharded outfmt 7

Motivation

An OpenAPI-plane submit (submission_source: external_api, the API Reference "Mode B — core_nt tabular + taxids" try-it) of -outfmt 7 std staxids sscinames failed with:

ERROR: Partitioned BLAST requires outfmt 5 without extended fields,
outfmt 6, or "6 std..."; 7 is not supported for merge

Root cause: the deployed elb-openapi image was tag 4.20, pinned and built on 2026-06-04. The three patches that make sharded outfmt 7 work —

  1. patch_partitioned_outfmt_gate (widen ElasticBLAST's elb_config.py partitioned-outfmt gate to allow 7 / 7 std),
  2. the quote-safe multi-token -outfmt argv rebuild in blast-run-aks.sh (patch_blast_run_aks_outfmt_argv), and
  3. the field-aware shard merge (resolve_tabular_columns in merge-sharded-results.sh)

— all landed on 2026-06-10 (commits 86e2c5e and 4bd037a), after the 4.20 image was built. The docker-openapi build context still carried the 2026-06-04 copies of patch_elastic_blast.py and merge-sharded-results.sh, which contain none of the three patches (grep counts were 0/0/0). The dashboard (terminal sidecar) path was already correct because its image was rebuilt by CI on the latest commit; only the separately-pinned OpenAPI plane was stale.

User-facing change

OpenAPI-plane sharded BLAST submits (/v1/jobs and the API Reference try-it) now accept -outfmt 7 std staxids sscinames and produce merged tabular results with taxid + scientific-name columns for NCBI databases that ship a taxdb (e.g. core_nt). No dashboard-submit behaviour changes.

API / IaC diff summary

  • api/services/image_tags.py: IMAGE_TAGS["elb-openapi"] bumped 4.20 → 4.21. 4.21 is the same upstream app code (3.7.5) rebuilt from the patched local context to pick up the gate/argv/merge patches.
  • ~/dev/elastic-blast-azure/docker-openapi/{patch_elastic_blast.py, merge-sharded-results.sh} refreshed from this repo's terminal/ copies (the build-context support files; not tracked in this repo). The committed Dockerfile already wires python3 /tmp/patch_elastic_blast.py at ELB_REF=7a471297, whose elb_config.py gate block matches the patch anchor verbatim, so the patch applies cleanly at build time.

Build + rollout

Rollout order (charter): build+push the sibling image to ACR FIRST, then move the pin.

cp terminal/patch_elastic_blast.py   ~/dev/elastic-blast-azure/docker-openapi/
cp terminal/merge-sharded-results.sh ~/dev/elastic-blast-azure/docker-openapi/
az acr build -r acrelbdashboard3abp67bppe -t elb-openapi:4.21 \
  -f ~/dev/elastic-blast-azure/docker-openapi/Dockerfile \
  ~/dev/elastic-blast-azure/docker-openapi
# then bump IMAGE_TAGS["elb-openapi"] = "4.21" and redeploy the elb-openapi pod

Validation evidence

  • git merge-base --is-ancestor confirms the 4.20 pin (6a818b6, 2026-06-04) predates the gate patch (86e2c5e, 2026-06-10) — the staleness root cause.
  • Context grep before refresh: gate=0, argv=0, merge=0; after refresh: 2/2/2.
  • ElasticBLAST elb_config.py gate block at 7a471297 matches the patch anchor verbatim (so the build-time patch applies without drift).
  • Post-deploy: re-run the Mode B outfmt 7 std staxids OpenAPI submit and confirm the job no longer fails at the partitioned-outfmt gate.